Archive for August 15, 2011

In North America, those of us who are teachers or students are thinking about school. In August and September, the summer holidays end, and a new term begins. To commemorate (or commiserate?) this season last year, I posted Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom: A Back-to-School Mix. This year, I’m posting a mix about language. Enjoy!

Leading the mix itself and its “ABC” section (which concludes with track 7), it’s the vocalese trio of Dave Lambert (1917-1966), Jon Hendricks (b. 1921), and Annie Ross (b. 1930). From their album Lambert, Hendricks & Ross! (a.k.a. The Hottest New Group in Jazz!).

“West Xylophone, Yemen, Zimbabwe!” They Might Be Giants’ alphabetical trip around the world, from their second children’s album, Here Come the ABC’s. If I weren’t restricting myself to one song per artist, I would definitely include other TMBG songs in this mix.

I don’t know much about Gordon MacRae, but Jo Stafford was a popular vocalist in the 1940s and 1950s. With husband Paul Weston, she was also half of the deliberately off-key comedy duo Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. This song appears on the compilation Small Fry: Capitol Sings Kids’ Songs for Grown-Ups.

Steven Page mocks Ed Robertson’s attempts to write a new alphabet song. Appears on Snack Time!, the first BNL children’s record. Word is that the group (now sans Page) is working on a second children’s record.

“These are the books I like to read / Because reading suits me. / With every page I turn, the pictures coma alive. / Imagination takes what’s possible to new heights.” And the song name-checks both Harold and the Purple Crayon and Green Eggs and Ham! From Frances England‘s Fascinating Creatures.

The first of 6 songs from Schoolhouse Rock on this mix. Since I encounter students (yes, college students) who do not know what a noun is, I often wish that these were still airing during Saturday morning cartoons.

“Hey, you know what? A round cookie with one bite out of it looks like a ‘C.’ A round doughnut with one bite of it also looks like a ‘C.’ But it is not as good as a cookie. Oh, and the moon sometimes looks like a ‘C,’ but you can’t eat that.” Words of wisdom from the Cookie Monster. The song appears on Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music, and (I expect) on many other compilations.

A song of malapropisms, a term named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775). This particular song, however, is from a different play — the Broadway musical Top Banana (1952), with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft.

From the band’s debut — a 6-song cassette. This Canadian quartet were my favorite group of the 1990s. Their live shows were something to behold. Below, an example of their improvisational stage shows. The song itself starts at around 4:30. Warning to our underage listeners: in the live performance below, Jian Ghomeshi drops a bunch of F-bombs at around 7:40 or so. The audio-only version (above) is clean.

The jump blues of Louis Jordan (and others) helped create the sound that would become known as “rock ‘n’ roll.” From The Best of Louis Jordan (MCA Records, 1975), a solid single-CD collection of his work.

The final song in our “nursery rhyme” sequence appears on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: The Middle Years Part Two (1938-1940). One in Bluebird/RCA’s fantastic series of Fats Waller CDs — now, alas, out of print.

The song for which Barenaked Ladies named their 2000 album appears on Ken Nordine’s spoken-word/jazz classic, Colors. I’ve placed it here because, like nursery rhymes and playground chants, the song is as much about the sound of words as what they mean. And, linking us to the next song, the theme of the record is Nordine trying to describe colors — the sort of task for which one might want to unpack some adjectives….

The mix concludes with four Schoolhouse Rock songs. I generally don’t like to use so many songs from the same record (in this case, a 4-CD set), but since each track is performed by a different artist, I’ve given myself a pass here. Here, the late Blossom Dearie — of “Peel Me a Grape” fame — teaches us about the adjective.

32) Verb: That’s What’s Happening Zachary Sanders (1974) 3:00
“A verb tells it like it is.” In addition to teaching us about verbs, this cartoon features an African-American superhero — not a common sight on television either in the early 1970s or today. Zachary Sanders also sang the Schoolhouse Rock song “Electricity, Electricity.”

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